At the end of the First World War, Carlo Guzzi and his brother-in-arms
Giorgio Parodi founded what would become the leading Italian marque. Its first
model in 1921 was a highly original horizontal single. It was a layout to which
Moto Guzzi was to remain faithful for 60 years and created a low-built, extremely
stable motorcycle.

Thirty Improvements

The first Sport version appeared in 1923, and was replaced in
1929 by the Sport 14 model which, if you believed the advertising, incorporated
30 improvements. These included the electrical equipment (separate magneto and
dynamo) and the frame, which had been modernized with revised geometry, a new
front fork, and a front drum brake (the first Sport only had a single rear
brake!).

Italian Best-Seller

The reliability of its models caused Guzzi's sales to soar
and in 1929 the marque became Italy's best-seller. The Mandello factory employed
500 workers. The Sport 14 alone was built at the rate of 50 units a week; a total
of 4285 examples were sold during the model's two years of existence. These
figures become even more astounding when you learn that only 50 examples of the
first Guzzi of 1921 existed. Production of the various versions of the Moto
Guzzi F-head 500cc - Sport, Sport 14 and 15 and types S and GTS with rear suspension
- only stopped in 1940, when over 17,500 motorcycles had been sold.